Glass Half Empty

By CHRISTINE HAUGHNEY

Published: September 27, 2009

Mel Vader and Bob Henderson figured that martini hour on the terrace of their apartment in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn, would grow only more interesting after Richard Meier built his 15-story glass tower across the way.

From their sixth-floor perch, the couple have seen a toddler on the eighth floor ride her tricycle around her balcony, and watched a cleaning crew come in after 10 p.m. to sop up after a flood of water poured through six stories. They know which of their neighbors in the Meier building make their beds and which do not, and who wears what while brushing their teeth. On one particularly engaging afternoon, they sat, captivated, as a woman appeared in the living room of a gray-haired bachelor, leading Mr. Henderson to hope for an unfolding romance.

''It's like a stage that they set up for us,'' said Mr. Vader, a retired teacher, who occasionally has turned his deck chair away in embarrassment.

But 10 months after the much-publicized -- and much-debated -- Meier building opened, most of that stage remains devoid of actors. On the side of the building facing their terrace, Mr. Vader and Mr. Henderson said, there is not a single person living on the 9th, 10th, 12th, 14th or 15th floors. While the developers say half of the building's 99 units have been sold, the real estate Web site StreetEasy.com documents only 25 closings through public records. When the sun falls, the view from Mel and Bob's terrace -- or, for that matter, from the storied Grand Army Plaza -- is not unlike a Christmas tree stripped of all but a handful of lights.

''You see that there are people there,'' Mr. Vader said. ''But you don't see the amount of movement that you would normally see.''

When Seventeen Development L.L.C. announced in 2005 that Mr. Meier would erect one of his elaborate glass and steel sculptures on a $4.75 million parcel in Prospect Heights, it was seen as a test of New York's real estate boom. Could the starchitect best known for designing Manhattan condominiums for the likes of Calvin Klein and Martha Stewart sell $1 million one-bedrooms in a still-gentrifying zone without a reliable public school?

Today, the Meier building -- officially, On Prospect Park -- is a wall of windows into the real estate bust.

Faced with anemic sales, the developers have slashed prices by as much as 40 percent. They combined units -- there were originally 114 -- to boost the percentage sold in order to ease the path to mortgages. But potential buyers have walked away from at least $20 million worth of contracts.

And the handful of people who moved in have been left exposed not only to the perils of buying at the peak of the market but also to the stifled laughter of their neighbors following their every move.

These pioneers have formed an Internet chat group to trade information about the building's construction progress and ever-dropping sales prices. They have also organized a book club, a tennis team, basketball tournaments, billiard games and myriad individual play dates and cocktail hours in a campaign to create a community within the glass walls.

''Some people would like to see this building fail,'' said Betty Flynn, a California transplant who pressed her lips together tightly as she paused while describing her hopes for weathering the downturn. ''We all have the same goal. We want to be in a great building.''

At a July meet and greet in the building's fishbowl-like first-floor party room, Ms. Flynn and her neighbors joked about the challenges of living in a Richard Meier building -- about how Mr. Meier, who himself lives in a prewar Manhattan co-op crowded with 5,000 books, hides the microwaves in minimalist kitchens and favors pale walls that quickly grow covered with children's fingerprints. They swapped stories about having food delivery show up across the street at the Brooklyn Public Library, since their building took its address, 1 Grand Army Plaza.

One woman said that seeing a unit similar to hers on the market for 30 percent less made her ''heart sink,'' while a couple apologized for negotiating more than $1.1 million off the $2.8 million asking price.

The residents have tried to maintain a sense of humor about the attention they have attracted for living in a glass tower, especially one that many local residents decried for changing the character of the streetscape.

One father sighed that he had probably been spotted chasing his naked toddlers through his apartment before bath time. Alan Fleischer, the bachelor seen with the female guest, clarified that she was there to clean the place, but said he had ordered curtains in case that special someone comes along.

Sometimes, the residents of the glass house wave at Mel and Bob enjoying martinis on their terrace across the way.

''Richard Meier has brought the outside inside for these people, but he's brought their interiors to everyone outside,'' Mr. Vader said. ''I get to see more than they get to see.''

Like many in their neighborhood, Mr. Vader and Mr. Henderson -- who have lived for 15 years in a grand traditional apartment with a sweeping circular staircase, period paintings and a shaggy-leaved ficus named Tina (as in Turner) -- at first staunchly opposed the idea of a totem of modern architecture being planted in the heart of their beloved Brownstone Brooklyn. They wrote to officials at the neighboring Brooklyn Public Library, botanical garden and Prospect Park, pleading for a design that blended better with the low-rise apartment buildings and the 11-acre oval plaza and arch designed by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux in the 1860s. Their pleas went unheeded. But the couple soon found themselves engrossed in the construction of what looked like a giant erector set in front of their terrace.

''It was a ballet,'' said Mr. Vader, 66, arms waving to mimic the dancing cranes. ''That initial opening of the earth with those extraordinary mechanicals.''

''Noise, noise, noise,'' piped in Mr. Henderson, 68, and retired from retail. ''But it was fascinating.''

Ruth Dropkin, who is 90 and has lived nearby for 31 years, was moved to write an ode to the building called ''Narcissus Ascending,'' which she sent, unbidden, to The New York Times.

''The naked steel girders go/up in hubris steps,'' she wrote. ''Gone the haven of brick and stone and wood,/gone the primal niche of interiority.''